Column by Fran Tully.
Exclusive to STR
Freedom is one of those words that is thrown around by everyone--even those who spend most of their lives trying to restrict yours. Freedom means different things to different people.
The men who started this country were willing to risk their lives over an unfair tax of 2%. Maybe they realized that 2% was just the proverbial camel's nose under the tent...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
As far as I know, there is no sound and comprehensive theory of the right way to allocate control (or ownership) of the Earth's 150 million square kilometers of land among its seven billion human inhabitants. Since conventional theorists are not even looking in the right haystack, it falls to libertarian ones to make the attempt, and some fairly good...

Column by George F. Smith.
Exclusive to STR
On the dedication page of Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto, we find these words:
"To my supporters: I have never been more humbled and honored than by your selfless devotion to freedom and the Constitution."
The modifier “selfless” is intended as a moral tribute. Imagine instead if he had written “selfish...

Column by Paul Hein.
Exclusive to STR
Although I have little interest in politics--except as outstanding examples of the madness of crowds--there was no avoiding them during the final days of the 2012 electoral campaigns. There seem to be two predominant campaign types.
There are the well-known negative campaign ads, in which candidate A points out the utterly baseless character, lack of...

Column by Stephen Nichols.
Exclusive to STR
While reading Paul Bonneau’s recent column on STR entitled “Voting Is Not Irrational,” I was taken aback by the obvious flaws in his analysis and the conclusions resulting from that analysis. It’s been a few days since his article was published and I’ve been formulating my response to it for some time. Let me now share with...

Column by DP_Thinker.
Exclusive to STR
Having just finished reading Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets Are Moral and Big Government Isn’t by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames, I found myself deploring government intervention even more than I had before. The “Freedom Manifesto” was a true indictment against big government failure. The theme of the book is to show the reader how...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
Karl Hess once said that historically, technological innovations always changed societies more than voting ever did, and without doubt he remains correct. All the evidence shows this to be true. Fire gave humanity the ability to survive the elements in greater numbers, and transition from the Stone to Iron Age. The printing press enabled Lutherans to...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
The coming free society will be rational; residents will live on the basis of reality and reason rather than myth. We will recognize government for what it is and therefore reject it on rational grounds; we will think in rational, economic terms predominantly. I can be sure of this, because a free society will not come into being until everyone does think...

Column by tzo.
Exclusive to STR
Modern governments are perhaps quite naturally thick-headed and self-destructive, destined to clumsily overreach and greedily overindulge until they inevitably collapse. It’s seemingly encoded into their metaphorical DNA.
But this is just the natural life cycle of any individual government—to be born; to consume, develop, and grow; and to die. And yet...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
When the Church of Rome has in mind to elevate one of its heroes or heroines to the status of sainthood, it follows a certain procedure – one element of which is to hear the opinion of an advocatus diaboli – a devil's advocate. His job is to reason against the proposed canonization, so reducing the probability of error.
That task fell in...

Column by Retta Fontana.
Exclusive to STR
What to do when someone you love is hopelessly embedded in the political system?
You meet someone. You’re very attracted to them. They may be intelligent, kind, good-looking, considerate, funny, generous--maybe even health conscious. They may owns firearms--a huge plus in my book and I’m guessing for a lot of STR readers as well. Like most...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
On Sunday, the elected mass murderer and head of the world’s largest organization of violent thugs (headquartered at lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere) crowed over the success of a hit-squad that rubbed out the small-scale thug that it created during the late 1970s to do its dirty work against the second-largest...

Exclusive to STR
Your philosophical musings begin at lunch with friends as the bill arrives. The sight of the total on the check sparks a question in your mind: “What exactly is a dollar?"
You throw the query out to your friends, and you receive various responses based on the same vague premises. A dollar measures value, but value is subjective, so the measure is...

Exclusive to STR
So once again someone has sent an airborne explosive device into a building that supposedly housed the “enemy” organization, and innocent people were killed and injured as part of the collateral damage.
And then it is discovered that the attacker had a “manifesto” of sorts that purports to explain the rationale for the strike. The four page...

Column by R.K. Blacksher
Exclusive to STR
There are few things more frustrating than engaging in a discussion with a Constitutionalist. It is a very depressing spectacle to observe people who are often very rational descend into the most vulgar style of starry-eyed hero worship when discussing the Founding Fathers and their divine governing document.
Lysander Spooner effectively...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Below is a photograph of a happy cop.
He's happy because at the end of a trying day, his team accomplished its mission; a suspected murderer had been arrested. He's also happy because behind him, a crowd of local residents, whom he thinks he “protects and serves,” is applauding him and his comrades for a job well done.
That doesn...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
Claire Wolfe recently wrote a column, People Who Don’t Think. I think she needs to rethink this, heh heh.
I have the utmost respect for Claire. I have some of her books, and she’s influenced me tremendously. However, I believe she may have gone down the wrong path with this idea, which I consider to be both politically and personally...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
There’s been a lot of talk for quite some time now about police brutality, misconduct, and unaccountability. In fact, last year saw an unprecedented level of demonstrations, riots -- and even multiple shootings of police – in response to cop actions against the populace deemed to be abusive and outside of written code, often with...

Exclusive to STR
January 27, 2009
Consider these events:
1. A president who started two aggressive wars, who bears responsibility for the loss of thousands of American lives along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives, leaves office as a free man without a felony record or any negative repercussions.
2. Meanwhile, the same populace that has intimate experience with lying...

Exclusive to STR
During a recent trip to St. Louis, I became quite intrigued by a seemingly mundane phenomenon. The city experienced a fairly intense thunderstorm, which resulted in the temporary breakdown of certain street lights. Upon my arrival at one of these intersections, I was fascinated by the orderliness that characterized motorists’ behavior. In spite of there being no...

Column by D. Saul Weiner.
Exclusive to STR
There are a lot of heated exchanges going on right now in social media related to vaccination. Many people have become convinced that parents who do not vaccinate are jeopardizing the health of others and that vaccines for children should be mandated. Politicians who are expected to run for president in 2016 are starting to weigh in on the topic and some...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...

Column by Faisal Moghul.
Exclusive to STR
Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
- 1...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by JGVibes.
Exclusive to STR
Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by L.K. Samuels.
Exclusive to STR
Chaos gets a bad rap—from the academic and scientific world, even from some uninformed libertarians. Few people realize that without the dynamics of chaos, order would not exist. In fact, nothing would exist. Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
I've been continuing to read the fascinating story of the modern libertarian movement's early years, as told in the Libertarian Forum, edited and often written by Murray Rothbard. It's vast, but very worthwhile – warmly recommended. I've supplemented it recently with a re-read of parts of Justin Raimondo's excellent biography of him...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
– 1 –
If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
Exclusive to STR
During my years as a practicing alcoholic, I employed any number of tactics to avoid the ultimately invariable conclusion that in order to solve my numerous problems, I needed to stop drinking altogether.
Even long after I had made the inner admission that I was, in all likelihood, suffering from the disease – and I knew or understood very...

The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
Column by L.K. Samuels.
Exclusive to STR
Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...

Column by Greg Haley.
Exclusive to STR
Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are.
Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...

Column by tzo.
Exclusive to STR
To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?"
Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...

Column by Jim Davies.
Exclusive to STR
Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him.
Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...